


Alpha Centauri

by Jessa



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Anal Fingering, Angst, Atypical soulmates, Biologist Magnus Bane, Bisexual Jace Wayland, Bonding, Canon-Typical Descriptions of Past Animal Violence, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Mentions of Past Character Death (Camille), Past Driving Under the Influence, Past Jace Wayland/Alec Lightwood, Past Magnus Bane/Camille Belcourt, Past Road Trauma, Photographer Jace Wayland, Protected Anal Sex, Re-Partnering, Recreational Drug Use (References), Resolved Sexual Tension, Sharing Body Heat, Strangers to Lovers, Vers Jace Wayland, Vers Magnus Bane, physical and emotional hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:23:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28640700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessa/pseuds/Jessa
Summary: In the past, Jace and Magnus have each had to say goodbye to someone they considered their soulmate. Jace got broken up with by Alec and Magnus lost Camille to a drunk driver. So they’ve both been going through some pretty rough patches until they randomly show up at the same time and place in New Zealand, on the anniversaries of their former relationships ending: Valentine’s Day night. Slowly they realize how much they have in common. It’s a fact that bothers them both at first until the night grows unexpectedly cold, and then all that matters is helping each other move on.Inspired by the story of the photographer who took the shotreproduced in this article. He had heard about the widowed penguins and went looking for them in order to capture the perfect photograph.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Jace Wayland
Comments: 8
Kudos: 10
Collections: Rare Pair Gift Exchange





	1. Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sivan325](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sivan325/gifts).



> For the very lovely and wonderful Sivan <3 <3 I hope you enjoy this <3 <3
> 
> Thank you to Jay for organising this event and to Polarnacht for pre-reading and beta-ing this story <3 I appreciate your help and advice so much <3

The sky above the Otago Peninsula is so clear tonight that when Jace looks up he might not be earthbound at all anymore. The sensation is strengthened by the ocean, its flat expanse reflecting constellations he’s been able to name since he was a kid. On his tenth birthday, a book on southern astronomy had arrived in the mail from his real father, Stephen, and Jace had learned the whole thing by heart, even the exposure times for all of the shots in the image appendix. That was also the birthday his stepdad, Michael, had given him his first ever camera: a Pentax K1000.

Jace shoulders the Nikon D500 he brought with him here to Dunedin, and starts to walk away from his rented Alfa Romeo Spider, parked at Pilots Beach, next to the most jacked up Porsche Carrera he’s definitely ever set eyes on, and not just drooled over pictures of on lifestyle blogs.

He supposes its owner is on the main beach by now. Probably along with a soulmate who likes penguins. Brought up here to romance in front of the nightly parade, and then disappear off into the dunes with, to smash back tinnies, smoke weed and get laid on Valentine’s Day. That’s what local lovers did around here, if he remembered it right. Jace had sure romanced his soulmate. Maybe not quite like that. But if he and Alec had been here, on the night that Alec had broken up with Jace, maybe that’s what they would’ve done. 

That might’ve happened before he’d tried to drive Alec home while wasted, not really thinking he was that far gone. That second part did happen. But Alec had his own ideas that night. He always was so sensible. And on principle, he had called it quits on the spot. He didn’t take risks, he’d said; Alec had ended up catching a cab but Jace had driven home anyway. Not many people knew that part of the story, only that the two of them had broken up. The former wasn’t a detail Jace was particularly happy about but the latter was definitely not one he was proud of now.

When he arrives at the secluded beach, southeast of Pilots, it’s to find the surf here just as calm as on the main one. Jace still can’t distinguish the sky from the sea, even though this coast is rocky; the reason why people never came here, a thing he remembered from college exchange days. There was no soft sand here to roll around in, no brush or sedge grass to hide between. Not even a cave to snug in when the light, late-night rain fell or when electrical storms lit the landscape, and deluges left most uncovered places sunk and as wet as the ocean itself. 

This was just a place to photograph in, and the only place he wanted to be in right now. Where rock was exposed to wind and rain and where, tonight, the horizontal breeze felt minimal, and the atmosphere seemed vaporless. No wind or cloud that threatened a storm, just the cold rock and the perfect solitude. Just the stars’ cold light and the moon’s, when it would rise later too, and when the penguins would hopefully visit. 

And again, Jace wouldn’t admit the whole truth of this to just anyone but he was really hoping to see the little seabirds tonight. Not the regular ones the tourists all came up here for, just two unusual ones that were rumored to come here sometimes. Two that he was determined to photograph if they did come down, and hopefully they would, but also if they even existed. If the science blog he’d been following since New Year wasn’t just a bunch of made-up shit. Man, would he be pissed off if it was.

The path Jace follows, through the brush, he’s been down only once before now. A long time ago, and with an amount of sobriety that back then was typical. That is to say, not very much; back during college exchange days again. When, before Alec, someone else had broken his heart, a girl this time. And Jace had been looking for respite from that, and somehow he had found it here. 

He couldn’t explain to someone, if they were to ask him for directions, how to get here. Not that he would, if they asked, go blabbing directions to a secluded spot, which would surely mean kissing it goodbye, that’s how it worked. Things were only secret if they were kept that way, and he wasn’t prepared to give this spot up. Some nights, like tonight, he still just really needed it.

Jace knew how to find this spot through his intuition alone. The same intuition he applied to determining what looked good through a viewfinder; intuition based on how things tugged at his heart. College had tried to teach him how to measure that sort of stuff, and guide books and blogs could try to teach him where to go to find the best locations to photograph in, but Jace knew better than both of those; he hadn’t become the best at what he did by asking and sharing. He’d become what he was by doing the opposite.

When he breaks through the last of the sedge, and when his hiking boots leave the gritty soil that the scrub grows from for the rock where nothing clings but the most stubborn clams, Jace’s mouth drops open in shock to find a campsite set up. It’s just like a picture from a glamping catalogue, and he would swear the quad-fold camping chair is one of those fancy heated ones: a HotSpot. The kind that are powered by portable batteries. But at first, he doubts it is one of those. Who the fuck would set a thing like that up at night on one of the most hostile stretches of New Zealand coastline a person could access? By foot at least.

Granted, the conditions tonight are as still as they surely could be. But shoreline conditions could rapidly change and anything not all but dyna-bolted down to the bedrock could be easily swept away, by more than one element. It would be mightily expensive to replace too, if it was. There’d be no guessing about that. Seemed over the top for what actually looked to be, to his untrained eye at least, more like a research station, with colored lights blinking sporadically from inside a tent. It reminds Jace of movies set in space. Not a casual glamper’s campsite at all. 

But as he looks closer, and notices several spinning things, maybe some kind of generator, beneath it there really is a charging bank set up next to the HotSpot with three spare batteries docked. Those could be swapped out all night, he guessed, so that no matter how cold the night grew, whoever that chair belonged to - researcher or otherwise - would stay warmer than the dick likely was by now of whoever owned the Carrera parked back on Pilots Beach. 

“Excuse me but I think you must be very _very_ lost.”

Jace turns sharply to his left at the sound of a deep but gentle voice inflected by an American accent. A figure around the same height and weight as Jace emerges from the dark, and in no time Jace’s smartphone torch is all over him. The bright beam directed straight into a face which Jace finds really nice to look at. And the figure doesn’t dodge the spotlight at all, instead he just raises a ringed hand, to partially shield his kohl-lined eyes with. Raises a neatly-groomed chin. And then he says calmly to Jace, still in the same soothing voice, “Give me a moment and then I’ll help you get back onto the trail. You’ve missed the tourist beach by about five miles but don’t worry, it’s a well-worn track. Nothing like the path you’ve just blazed to get here. I’m almost impressed you’ve made it so far down it, well done.”

* * *

From the seat of his HotSpot, Magnus collects the keys to his Porsche and pockets them. Then he makes a swift move for the gap in the sedge grass he’s privately gobsmacked the wayward blond with the rather dreamy eyes has found. On an ordinary evening, he doubts very much he’d object to such a pretty man showing up anywhere near his vicinity unannounced, but tonight is not one of those times. Magnus has work to do here and then there is the matter of today’s date. It’s never an easy one to get through. And for as hard as he tries, Magnus knows that he’s rarely at his amicable best on Valentine’s Day.

He gets several strides deep into the scrub before he’s aware that the only bootsteps he can hear in the otherwise silent night are his own. The blond isn’t following. Magnus stops and turns around. “Hello?” he calls out, keeping his voice low but not the clear note of perturbance from it. “Perhaps you didn’t hear what I said-”

“That’s your car? The silver Carrera parked down at Pilots?” There’s an impressed tone in the voice of the stranger and pride immediately rises in Magnus. At least until the other man keeps talking. “Well, no wonder you got a heated chair all the way out here. D’you cut the crusts off your sandwiches too? Huh?”

Magnus stares for a moment seaward, at the empty space in front of him. Which the blond is still not occupying but from which his distinctly East Coast North American accent is carrying at a volume much higher than Magnus would like it to be. This land isn’t public, halfway between Taiaroa Head and the Point. If anything happens to him out here, Magnus may very well be liable. He himself has no legal business being here at all, no permit, and therefore no legal cover. Right now they’re both technically breaking the law and, aside from that, what’s just been said is a clear personal dig. And it has deeply wounded Magnus on a day when he’s already feeling vulnerable. It’s been three years tonight since his soulmate’s death. Magnus doesn’t think he will ever be over Camille.

Swiftly, he moves back through the sedge. “I’m going to completely ignore your pathetic attempt to make yourself feel bigger by berating me and instead, I’m just going to explain this to you in terms even a neanderthal like you can understand. I’m saying this for your benefit. This is private land and you are trespassing on it so you can either leave, chaperoned by me, or you can leave, chaperoned by a cop. And before you answer, please keep your voice down. I’m here conducting fieldwork and the volume at which you're pitching your inconceivable insolence at me borders on affecting my results.”

“Borders on affecting your results?” For a moment the blond just blinks at him with his infuriatingly interesting eyes, and then he adds, “I could give you some results. Show me your driver’s license, let’s see _those_ results. Because if you’re really asking a _neanderthal_ -”

“No,” Magnus says flatly. “I am not showing you anything. And you have _no_ right to ask me to, how _dare_ you...” But he knows full well what kind of information the man is after and he’s certainly not about to prove he doesn’t live anywhere near Dunedin by flashing a driver's license issued by the State of New York.

The blond gives him a look as perfectly insolent as everything else about him. “Well, why not?” he asks smugly. “Hiding something? Who’re you renting those hot wheels from? Sixt? Or Devine?”

The stranger still has his smartphone torchlight trained on Magnus’ face. It limits his vision but he can sense the man shifting position behind the beam, and taking in more of the scene he’s stumbled across. Magnus is quite sure of that now, that he’s stumbled across all this. He would absolutely bet the Porsche on that. As hard as Magnus can now tell that he’s trying to evade actually saying so, this guy isn’t here on purpose at all. There’s a certain kind of innocence about him. He’s not entirely innocent, Magnus can see straight through that mask too, but still there’s something he can’t quite place the tip of his finger on yet that suggests he’s not been around quite as many blocks as he’d very much like for Magnus to believe. And also that what he says is said because he’s wounded. But Magnus doesn’t know how he knows that, he just does.

He ducks from beneath the blond’s beam and catches out the stranger’s eyes roaming over his campsite; again leaving Magnus with the distinct impression he’s looking for evidence to support his suspicions. Namely that Magnus is trespassing too, and that if he can’t get confirmation on that from his driver's license, he’s determined to get it by some other means. And, like the way he first arrived here, Magnus is almost impressed by that. Almost. He narrows his eyes. “My car is not a rental. It’s curious your mind went that way though. Suspicious minds think alike. Care to show me _your_ driver’s license?” 

“No,” the blond refuses as curtly as Magnus did earlier.

Magnus studies him. Something then, about the way he blinks, causes Magnus to respect that boundary. Even though his own is not being respected but someone has to be the bigger person, surely. “This is a very hard spot to find,” Magnus broaches carefully.

“I follow a blog,” the blond admits quietly. “I guess _neanderthals_ can read.”

Magnus’ eyes widen in unbridled surprise, as much at his own partial misjudgment as for the mention of what he assumes can’t be anything else but his own blog. A thing he keeps public, yes, but also very carefully nondescript. He swallows hard.

“Alright, listen,” Magnus begins to bargain, deciding that much more than he would like for a perfect stranger to reveal the finer points about his own scientific misdemeanors, and the personal paths down which those might lead, he would like to reveal them himself. Or some of them at least. The scientific ones. “Turn off the light and I’ll tell you the truth.”

The smartphone light goes out without a fuss and Magnus stands for a moment in the comparative darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust back to the starlight.

“I don’t blog precise details,” Magnus murmurs, crossing in front of him to check the tension on the guy lines securing his tent to the rocky beach. “It’s safer that way... I’m here to research, this isn’t a penguin parade... What I post online is not done to do anything other than log what I observe. And generate a vague interest. That’s why I use a pseudonym.”

“That’s your truth?” The blond snorts. “You basically just told me everything I already know about you. You know, I can show you my bag. There’s no booze or weed, I came here on purpose. I’m _not_ lost. Tell me something I _don’t_ know, like... Well, like, maybe you could start with your name. What’s your real name?”

“I’ve told you more than you’ve told me,” Magnus says firmly in evasion of the question. “How did you know how to get here? Tell me that.”

“I’ve been here before,” the stranger concedes without missing a beat. 

“You’re lying,” Magnus accuses, not prepared to believe it although the evidence is rapidly stacking up against that theory now. “You’re about as local as I am... Which side of Brooklyn are you from, hm? All I know about you is that you’re jealous of my car and I assume that’s also why you made fun of me. You can make fun of me if you feel you really need to but when the air grows frigid later, you’ll be wishing that you hadn’t... If you’d been here before, you might actually know that, by the way. _Neanderthal_.”

“Nope. No chance of me gettin’ cold.” The blond cocks the collar of the parka he’s wearing. “This is a _Snow Mantra_. Warmest parka fucking _ever_. And not, I’ll have _you_ know, because it needs any _batteries_.”

“Just your annual income,” Magnus murmurs.

“Huh?”

Finished with the guy lines, he moves back to where the blond still stands. Noticing that, by now, as well as the bag, he’s set down several more of his own items. Including his own distressed-looking quad-fold chair and what looks to be, to Magnus’ untrained eye, a rather dinged-looking photographer’s tripod. Magnus could almost slap his own heart for tugging in the way it does now. What he’s about to do defies all logic. But since when has his heart been logical? That’s only his occupation. Isn’t it? Magnus extends his hand. “I said my name is _Magnus_.” 

Speaking of his heart, he can feel it in his mouth. Or perhaps more accurately, given what Magnus knows of himself after so many years spent knowing it, he can feel his heart in his hand. As though it’s this which he offers the blond because for as much as he still doesn’t wholly trust him, for as much of an unexplained asshole as he sure seems to be - especially when he perceives that his ego has been wounded - there’s just something about him. Something that Magnus knows is wounded. And it reminds Magnus so much of himself.

“Jace,” the blond says as their hands meet. “My name’s _Jace_.”


	2. Scorpions

“Well, I had the suspension raised,” Magnus recalls in response to Jace’s question about what’s been modified on his Carrera. “Every field trip I take is a long way down some unsurfaced road. Sometimes barely recognizable _as_ a road... More like a road I wish existed.”

Jace chuckles. He’s been listening closely from where he sits in his quad-fold, not far from Magnus’ HotSpot. And they’ve been settled down like this for maybe a half-hour now. Just talking and watching the stars twinkle enigmatically over the Pacific Ocean before them.

“And then I got the wheel openings enlarged,” Magnus continues. “To fit the rally tyres underneath. I was fussy about those, and I never accept just anything. I wanted nothing less than hard Pirelli Scorpions.”

“Oh, no way... I _knew_ those were Scorpions!” Jace looks with what is probably an embarrassing amount of open awe at Magnus; but Magnus doesn’t make fun of him for it, he just beams. 

And for the second time Jace notices just how nice his face is to look at. The first time he’d been too caught up in his shock at who the Carrera belonged to, and the fact he’d just so randomly stumbled across him in the wilderness. But this time, Jace just lets his eyes devour that look. Because it’s dark and it’s cold, but he’s feeling cozy. And it’s Valentine’s Day, a triggering time, and he thinks about what he thought about earlier: the rolling around, the hiding between, the snugging. And how he’d come here because he almost felt he had to, something was calling.

“Well, most people certainly wouldn’t know that,” Magnus is saying. “You have a very good eye, Jace... I guess that’s the photographer in you.”

On any other night, from anyone else he’s ever met during almost his whole entire life so far, Jace would accept a compliment like that in his stride, probably even from Alec. But for some reason, from Magnus, the words make his cheeks burn. And the warmth that awareness generates in him has nothing at all to do with how cozy he feels right now in his Snow Mantra. 

Magnus is still looking at Jace. “That’s not a blush I detect now, is it?” he asks in the same voice he’d used the first time they’d spoken. The deep and gentle one. “Rising over there in your cheeks, Jace?”

“Ah,” Jace chuckles again. “Don’t you go telling me now that you’re flirting with me… Are you flirting with me? Like, for all you were doing before-”

“For all _I_ was doing before?” 

Jace watches, with growing amusement, Magnus roll his eyes theatrically then raise one knowing eyebrow. Jace just grins. “Yeah, all _you_ were doing before... I know flirting when I see it. _Magnus_. Man, I still can’t believe you’re attempting to tell me that’s your real name, and not just another pseud.”

Magnus laughs. And Jace can’t help but let his tongue run around his teeth at the way he looks and sounds when he does that. “Do you mind that I’m flirting with you, Jace? And don’t you dare try to rib me for _my_ name,” he adds. “I’ll grant you yours if you’ll grant me mine.” 

His eyes seem to sparkle in the night. And even though, by now, the starlight is ablaze, they don’t seem ablaze with that. LEDs blink out of sync from his equipment tent but Magnus’ eyes aren’t enhanced by those either. 

“Sure. Okay... And, no. I don’t mind.” Jace shifts in his chair and it might be just an impression but Magnus seems to do the same thing. Jace can better see into his eyes now. “Do you know anything about stars? You're a scientist, right, so maybe you do.”

“I would love,” Magnus says, “Very much for you to tell me some things that you know about stars, Jace. I’m a biologist, I don’t know _every_ science beyond the tenth grade. And I didn’t realize you were into astronomy... I thought you were just into me.”

Jace snorts. “I'm _meant_ to be here for penguins. So are you. Or is that just, like, a totally elaborate-”

“As odd as it may seem, it’s not a ruse, Jace, no.” Magnus looks out at the ocean. “It’s become something of an obsession, actually. Penguins are empathetic creatures. I never knew that they were such fascinating creatures, either, not until someone taught me. Someone who was once very _very_ special.” He sighs. “The ones that are here, I... Well, do you know, I remember very clearly when it happened to them. I remember watching both of them lose their breeding partners, one to a seal and the other to a giant petrel. Penguins are monogamous during their seasons and they rarely re-partner until the next one, if they lose their mate... Still, it’s such a strange thing not to intervene when you know their spouse is in danger... It’s hard to let nature just do what it will and yet know that you could change the course of something’s life. And consequential or potential lives. Even if those lives belong to what some people might call _just_ animals... They’re not _just_ animals, Jace... So maybe, yes, you could change those courses but you also know you just won’t. You can’t... Intervention is interference and it compromises results. Data... We merely study things as scientists, we don’t play _gods_ , so to speak. Fate is an idea but so is that we might change it.”

“Did you want to help them?” Jace watches Magnus turn his full attention back from the ocean and onto him. “The partners of the widowed ones you blogged about?” 

“Of course,” Magnus says. “Of course I did... And you see, in field observations, you do watch things die.” He pauses. Jace wonders if something’s wrong but then he continues. “It happens often, Jace. Death is as common as birth. But that feeling, of wanting to help, it never leaves you... Helping is an urge that you fight each time, a human impulse... But it’s not a very objective one in this context. If there are gods, they watch us like we watch wild animals.”

“Did you ever have any pets?” Jace asks. “You know, like, as a kid?” He takes a deep breath. “I had a bird once. A falcon.”

Magnus gives him a look of surprise. “Interesting,” he muses.

“Yeah, I guess.” Jace chuckles darkly. “I had this uncle, he’s... Well, he’s long gone now but he used to take me shooting. Not, like” - he motions to his Nikon, which oddly he still hasn’t taken from its bag and set up - “Not like _photography_ shooting. I don’t mean that. Shooting with guns, like, hunting? Rabbits. Roos. He lived in eastern Australia. My step-parents sent me over there for a couple of summers... When I was fourteen, he gave me a Peregrine falcon. It was just a fledgling, had fallen out of its nest. He _said_.”

Jace stops for a moment. He pulls his smartphone out of his pocket, not entirely sure as to why. Maybe it’s just nerves. But Jace has told this story before, it shouldn’t still make him nervous. Emotional. He glares at the phone’s dark screen.

“You can stop if you want to, Jace,” Magnus murmurs.

“I don’t want to stop,” he hisses in answer, not surprised by his sudden change in mood, just annoyed. And the reception is out on his phone, and this seems to incense him further. Jace takes a deep breath and releases it slowly because that’s what the counselors were always telling him to do: _stay present_. 

“My uncle told me that falcons were hunting birds,” Jace elaborates quietly, letting his fingernail run beneath the edge of the skin of his phone case and his phone. Paying attention to the way the unforgiving lip stings slightly when it digs into the soft bed of his chewed-down nail. “They’re raptors... So he told me that when we went shooting, I could use a bird of prey to locate a carcass. He told me that if I shot something badly, and it got out of sight, limped off. Slowly bled out, and I lost it... Well, he taught me how to train my bird to find things like that... I didn’t have so many friends when I was that age and it was like that bird just knew me. And I taught it just fine, but not in the ways that _he_ wanted me to... There was a farm cat where he lived, it started bringing me rats... Do you know the way cats do that?”

“I do,” Magnus murmurs again. “Means they like you.”

“Well, I used to feed all those rats to my falcon. Not as rewards, just... Well, just _because_. You know? Just because my bird seemed to like them. And when I used to go out, just walking, I’d take it with me. It was my friend. I’d let it off its leash and let it just fly free, and it would always come back... Until, one day, my uncle found out and he wrung its neck, right there on the spot, in front of me. He said I hadn’t listened and that it was my fault. For... For caring for something that I shouldn’t. It was a working bird, not a pet to be loved... He was an asshole... But, yeah, I get it, what you’re saying... Totally... Emotions only cloud your fuckin’ judgement.”

* * *

Magnus sighs heavily into a relative silence that extends for several minutes as Jace’s words hang in the air like the clouds above them that refuse to; the night’s still spotless. Magnus’ instincts suggest that it's been several hours since sundown now and several more since he arrived here to begin setting up his equipment. 

He’d prefer to know the precise time though, not just speculate about it. Especially since there’s been no sign yet of the penguins. There should have been and he should log that. It’s most likely that the Valentine’s Day crowds around the Head have either delayed the colony or caused them to return to their burrows more quickly tonight, perhaps even during sundown. Sometimes they scampered in from the sea that early, if they could sense conditions were unusual; and sound traveled far over sea, which could sometimes in itself be enough change to impact on their habits.

Magnus considers getting up to record his thoughts, and check the time. Normally, when fieldwork started to drag because there was little to observe and little to record - at times when he sometimes sat around for hours - he became reluctant to check things like time. And especially at night, in the colder locations. 

At those times, his HotSpot kept him so warm he could sleep in it, and that’s what he was planning to do tonight but for some reason now he is eager to move. Even though Jace isn’t moving at all from his own chair, burying himself deeper into the screen of his smartphone the more the minutes tick on. Perhaps he needs space now, Magnus would understand that. It was hard to reveal deep dark things even to friends, let alone perfect strangers. Magnus is living proof of that.

He leaves his chair and crouches down at the mouth of the tent. Unzips the entrance and studies his equipment, analyzing his various instruments, reading them. The air temperature is already down to eleven degrees celsius which means a cooler than average night ahead, given the lack of humidity. A shiver runs across the blades of his shoulders, enough to make his nipples stand on end beneath his clothing. The weatherproof jacket he wears is only lightweight, and not made for warmth. It’s why he brought the HotSpot this time; summer months on the South Island could still record surprisingly low overnight temperatures.

He takes a last look in the direction of his satphone, ensuring no alerts have been received in the time since he last checked it. Nothing unusual blinks from its set of diodes so he re-zips the tent, stands up, and makes his way back over to where Jace still sits, further engrossed in his screen. 

Again, Magnus starts to wonder about his wellbeing. He starts to wonder, too, if perhaps he should offer to walk him out of here, as he’d suggested he could do earlier, and back up to the car park at Pilots Beach where, based on their earlier conversation, he must also have a car stationed. Magnus’ eyes roam over the campsite, not unlike Jace’s had when he had first arrived here; scrutinizing and looking for abnormalities. He nearly audibly gasps when he finds one. It explains why he felt the need to move earlier. Why he shivered. Speaking of LEDs-

“So, guess what I do on my phone when the cell tower drops out?”

Magnus swallows dry and glances over in the direction of the sudden return of Jace’s voice. He still has his nose in his phone. Although the fact he’s talking again gives Magnus hope that maybe he’s moved through whatever he needed to in the minutes that have passed since their last conversation ended. It doesn’t allay the panic starting to rise inside Magnus though. 

“I’ve no idea,” he murmurs slowly. “What do you do when the cell tower drops out, Jace? Why don’t you go ahead and tell me.” But his full attention is on the HotSpot’s battery pack now, where normally a series of diodes glow either green or amber, depending on the level of charge left in it. There’s nothing there though but darkness.

“I use other apps,” Jace says. 

There’s an odd tone to his voice. Through his internal panic, Magnus can still detect it. It’s something not unlike sarcasm. Very possibly, it is sarcasm. And Magnus might otherwise laugh but he doesn’t feel like laughing now as he stares in a quiet kind of horror at the diodes that are also out on the charging bank set up near the rest of his equipment. Where all three of his spare batteries are docked.

“You...what?” Magnus murmurs again, starting to feel his heart hammer inside his chest and hear his pulse reverberate sickeningly in his ears. And in the external silence around them, on such a still night as this, he wonders if Jace can’t also hear that. Magnus’ eyes flick across to where he’s still sitting, to check.

“Yep,” Jace says, still sounding chipper, and not yet wiser to Magnus’ sudden plight, tapping away as he is now at the screen of his smartphone. “I use _other_ apps. Ones that _don’t_ need the internet. Like...the Calculator app.” He taps away at his screen again. “Forty-eight,” he says slowly, while he taps, “Divided by five is...nine-point-six.” Jace looks up at Magnus. “Did you know that? Maybe you did because you’re a scientist and that’s sort of Maths-y, right? Or” - he looks back down at the screen - “The Clock app.” He starts a new pattern of tapping. “Did you know, Magnus, that right now it is... Well, it is 10.20 am in Ghana.” Jace looks up again from his phone. “How ‘bout that? Fascinating, right? Screw the fucking internet, who needs that? Not me.” He beams at Magnus who forces a smile but Jace frowns. “Hey... Are you okay? You know, you look like you’ve seen a ghost... You’re kind of... Wait, are you actually cold?”

“Everything’s fine.” Magnus feigns nonchalance, forcing another smile, and making more of an effort to do it this time. “I just had the thought that we may not see penguins for quite some time, given that they’re very sensitive to noise, and there must have been a fair amount of that up the beach earlier. The flux in crowds and all. And the date today and...well...all.”

“Oh,” Jace says. “Right... Yeah, okay... I just thought something might’ve been wrong, you know, like, with your equipment or something? ‘Cause, like, my phone reception is gone.” He holds the phone up and Magnus smiles politely and nods, still masking his internal panic. “But maybe you have satellite coverage so, for you, all your stuff might still work, I guess.”

Magnus’ attention snaps towards the tent. The satphone lights had still been on, hadn’t they? Still in a very controlled fashion, still careful not to reveal what’s really going on, he moves back to check, crouching down again and unzipping the tent. Eyes raking over the laptop and, yes, the satphone still appears connected to the solar storage. He jiggles it within its charging cradle, just to be sure that his eyes aren’t playing tricks. But the diodes extinguish then glow as the connection points part and touch with each testing maneuver he makes. There’s nothing wrong with the flow of power here. It’s only the kinetic power outside that’s failed. Magnus frowns. 

“Land signal’s lost, that’s all,” he lies as he re-zips the tent and returns to where Jace sits, eyeing the bank of batteries along the way. The pendulums on the charger have stopped, for how long he can only guess at now but it’s irrelevant; they would take hours to power up even one whole battery again, let alone three. Which the circuit required just to run. “Everything else is fine, satellite equipment all still works. Probably just a temporary loss of the tower. We’re remote here, so it’s not unexpected. Precisely why I brought the satphone. I always come prepared for everything, Jace.”

But privately he wonders when the pendulums stopped. Magnus has taken all of this equipment out on numerous occasions and none of it has ever failed him, not even once. The outage is unexplained. And everything was working the last time he checked it, which was just before Jace arrived so unexpectedly. 

Magnus returns to his chair, pulling the collar of his weatherproof jacket up higher as he settles back down into its cold seat.


	3. Found

Jace expertly shakes off the excess, tucks himself back into his jeans and zips his fly. By the light of his smartphone torch, he starts to plan his way back down the rocky beach to where he can see the distinctive curve of Magnus’ tent, a hundred or so metres away. Satisfied there’s nothing too unruly in his way, he extinguishes the torch beam and then he starts to walk back, relying on the ambient light of the constellations above to guide him. The moon has not yet risen so the brightest point of light in the whole vicinity is still Alpha Centauri, visible about halfway up from the horizon and reflected on the flat surface of the sea. That’s how calm the beach still is, and how bright the most prominent star.

In a rare display, Jace feels his heart lighten as he treads over and between the contours under his feet. There’s hardly a lap of a wave but he can hear the night calls of creatures and their scuffles through the sedge grass on his right. To his mind’s eye returns the imagery he recalled earlier for Magnus, of the falcon he had as a kid. Jace swallows. 

He lets his eyes flit between the rocks underfoot and the sky. His hiking boots are sturdy and the surface beneath them is like the falcon’s leash, grounding. Binding his soul to the earth. But only until he forces it heavenward. Only until Jace lets his mind soar as high as his falcon used to. Sometimes it would disappear for hours. And he would panic that it wouldn’t return but it always did. As though it couldn’t fly free forever. A constant push and pull, during those few weeks his uncle had allowed him to keep it, between trusting things wholly and not trusting them an ounce. And somewhere, weaved between all those memories, are others that are all about Alec, and about stars. 

Jace doesn’t understand how it all sits together in his brain like it does, only that it does. His eyes dampen and he’s unsure as to whether or not that’s from the chill that’s now distinct in the air, which he can feel starting to pinch at his cheeks and nose. He hikes up the neck guard on his Snow Mantra, the warm fleece of his parka shielding him as Jace returns to the campsite to find no sign of Magnus; the HotSpot is empty. 

Jace’s eyes flick to the southern end of the campsite, and he treads across the opening of the small single-person tent. He walks several metres beyond it, his curiosity growing, before turning his eyes to the water in case Magnus might have moved down there. Maybe he’s seen the penguins so perhaps it’s time for Jace to finally set up his Nikon. His camera’s still packed away in his bag but he’d really like to take some pictures. 

“Magnus?” he calls out softly.

He’s still wary of the tense talk he’d been given when he’d first arrived here, when Magnus had seemed so adamant about him keeping his voice down. Although once they’d gotten started, none of their subsequent conversations had really been kept like that at all. And Jace hadn’t heard a peep of evidence that suggested anyone else was nearby in the whole time he’s been here. Just the sounds he and Magnus made as they sorted things out, and the ones in the background of the brush and coastline, as that had sorted its own things out. The occasional call of a nocturnal bird, the distinctive growl of a fur seal. The soft plink of something breaching the otherwise seamless surface of the unusually placid ocean tonight. And a new sound now too. A shuffle inside the tent. Jace looks towards it and notices that it has been left unzipped.

“Magnus?” He approaches the opening cautiously. “Are you in there?”

Jace crouches down and peers inside. He hasn’t really been close enough yet to notice too many details. Small artificially-coloured lights, visible through the nylon, are about as far as he’s gotten to guessing at what it might contain. But he can see their sources now; darkened objects arranged on the floor along the tent’s left-hand side. There’s cabling strewn across a rubber mat which lines it. And to the right of all that is Magnus. Huddled in the corner. His knees drawn all the way up to his chin and his ringed fingers laced together around his shivering jean-clad shins. 

“Holy shit,” Jace vents in surprise.

He thought maybe there was a vague possibility that while he’d been off up the beach, pissing, Magnus might’ve been taking the opportunity to suck on a bong in here; sort of scientific, Jace figured. But not something he wanted to share with a veritable stranger necessarily, which was fair enough. It was probably what Jace would do, if their situations were reversed. Never, though, did he think he’d return to find Magnus like he looks now; freezing nearly half to death.

“What the actual _fuck_ ,” Jace mutters, his knees tangling in a low section of the tent’s rainfly in his hurry to get closer to Magnus, and get him warm. The resultant chaos trips him briefly, so that he stumbles on his knees, a little clumsily, through and beyond the opening of the tent. But at least, by the end of all that, he’s inside it. “I thought you fucking said you weren’t cold?” Without even thinking twice, hurriedly Jace starts to unfasten the front of his Snow Mantra and shrug it off and down his shoulders. “Fucking hell... How long have you been like this for? Huh? The cell tower... Was it? Is that when it was? Did power go out or something?”

“I’m not _that_ c-cold,” Magnus stammers. “Keep your p-parka on or you’ll get cold too. And no, it wasn't the cell tower, thank you... Cell towers don’t supply power, they communicate waves... Honestly, don’t you know _a-_ _anything?_ ”

“For the love of fuck’s sake,” Jace groans, the sleeves of his parka already nearly halfway down his biceps. In the places across his back, where the yoke’s left contact with his body, he can feel the bitter air starting to seep quickly through the Henley he’s wearing underneath it. He’d been so warm, he hadn’t realised the extent of just how chilly the night had suddenly grown. “You put this on and I’ll help you get back to Pilots Beach, to your car, okay?” he says, working the Snow Mantra further down his arms. “Yeah... Fuck this, we’ll just do that. If you’re this freezing now, well, you’re gonna be an icicle by the morning. And there’s nothing out here tonight to see anyway, you’re right. You can get all this shit in the morning. No one comes here, it’ll be safe.”

“No, Jace,” Magnus says. 

“What?”

“No,” Magnus repeats. 

“Magnus, you can’t just stay here like this all night, okay? You’re freezing cold! I can’t even believe you fucking didn’t say there wasn’t even something wrong when I asked you before, you’re... Well, you’re as stubborn as even _I_ am!” Magnus glares at him silently and Jace groans again in frustration. “Urgh... Alright, look, if you really won’t go anywhere then I’ll leave you with my parka, okay? And I’ll just go back and-”

“Please don’t do that, Jace... I like your c-company.”

Jace’s heart skips a beat. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out in response to that. A million things go through his head though. Why would anybody say they liked his company? Not even Alec had ever said that in so many words. Alec had made Jace feel like that but Alec and words had been water and oil. People, including Alec, had said they liked other things, but not things he could do too much about. Not things that went much deeper than his surface. He was dark as hell, wasn’t he? And, around Magnus, he felt just about as dumb as shit too. 

Magnus is still looking at Jace, and he’s still visibly freezing. But his eyes are so earnest as they look at him now that Jace can’t think of another time when he’s ever wanted to look away, ever, from anyone's. And there’ve been a lot of anyones. Magnus starts to move. Slowly his shivering fingers unclasp and he reaches out for Jace’s nearest hand, which is still paused at the opening of his Snow Mantra, half-on, half-off. Magnus’ fingers curl themselves beneath Jace's palm, seeking its warmth. And Jace's palm can’t help but close around them, seeking to warm.

Still neither of them speak. But Jace doesn’t feel like either of them need to. Magnus pulls Jace around him and Jace pulls the open sides of his parka around Magnus. And their bodies slide together, down to the rubber mat on the floor. Jace on the outside, covering Magnus with more of himself, and with whatever else he can of the Snow Mantra, with Magnus finally coming to rest facing in towards his scientific equipment, all wrapped up now in Jace. 

Magnus wriggles his body, pressing his back against Jace’s chest, and Jace realises that he’s been wrong, this whole time. He and Magnus are not the same height at all. Jace is just a little bit longer in the torso. But only by enough to mean the way they fit together like this is seamless. They’re a perfect fit when they lie spooned like this and when Jace puts his arm around Magnus’ waist, his hips just draw right in. So that the curve of his ass can snuggle against the soft bulge of Jace’s jeaned cock and balls. 

* * *

Even given all the precious hours that he ever spent with Camille, before the accident took her life, Magnus wonders if anything could ever feel better than the warmth right now that’s radiating through to him from Jace’s core, after his own has been so cold. But then Jace slips a hand beneath a gap he seems to have found between the fastenings of Magnus’ weatherproof jacket and - thinking of those years with Camille again - he remembers that there is definitely at least one thing that can feel even better than this. 

Jace’s blissfully warm breath is too faint against the uncovered skin at his nape and so Magnus leans back, seeking more, as a hand firms against his belly, drawing their bodies nearer. The hand grows tentative, and fingers start to play with the weave of his thermal skivvy. He hears Jace make a soft sound of surprise. “You’re shredded underneath this thing,” he mutters.

Magnus smiles into the minimal amount of room left inside the tent now two people, as well as his equipment, are in it. He closes his hand around the outside of Jace’s, pressing both hands together, flat against his belly. “You’re so warm.” Magnus wriggles against him again.

“Stop doing that. Stop wriggling like that.” But Jace doesn’t pull himself back or move to push Magnus away. Instead he seems to draw him in even closer. But his words have been said like almost everything else he's said so far to Magnus, with an absolutely delicious amount of insolence, and the combination is irresistible. For both of them.

“I’m not wriggling," Magnus says.

“You are _so_ wriggling and you know it... This is like your flirting all over again."

"Oh, still with _my_ flirting... I’m just trying to make some friction, that creates heat... _Jason_.”

"Don’t call me that, it’s not my name.”

Magnus cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of his expression, to read him as he would do with an instrument. Because Jace goes silent after that, and Magnus wonders for his wellbeing again. He feels Jace tense and Magnus tenses too. “Jace... Are you okay? I'm sorry.”

The arm around his middle squeezes, and Jace’s thighs tuck up beneath the backs of Magnus' own. And then Magnus thinks back to the last time he worried like this about Jace. Just before all this started. Just before the ordeal began with the HotSpot. When it grew cold. Just before that. When Jace had been talking. Telling him the story of his falcon. “I’m glad you told me..." Magnus' thumb shifts a little against Jace's hand, which Magnus still has pressed to his belly. "Jace... I find it hard to share things too. Real things... Not just things about science... I find it hard to share things about me, Jace. Sometimes... Oftentimes.”

Jace’s silence continues, but slowly more time passes regardless. And their bodies remain just as they are, pressed close, the pain that was earlier racking Magnus dissipating as Jace’s heat starts to overtake the cold he felt. 

Magnus wriggles again and, to his pleasure, this time there is no sign or sound of protest from behind him. Against his back, Jace’s chest expands as Magnus is squeezed again inside this half-embrace, and Jace shifts too this time. They both sigh a little as Jace moves himself against Magnus, and pulls him purposefully closer. And Magnus knows that what he felt of Jace’s at first, which was soft, isn’t like that at all anymore. 

He turns inside Jace’s arms. The only lights inside the tent are the orange and green glow of diodes. They cast the face Magnus has only seen in starlight into a kind of otherworldly contrast. He gazes into Jace’s eyes, realising for the first time why they’re so infuriatingly interesting. “Heterochromia iridum,” he murmurs, looking from one mismatched iris to the other. 

Those follow his own as Magnus reaches up to Jace’s face and touches the tips of his fingers to the delicate skin beneath the lower lash of each eye. And with each of those careful touches, Jace’s lids flutter, and his lips part further and further. Until, in the end, Magnus’ fingers end up there, at his lips. And they settle against his lower one. Happy Jace is letting him get this close.

“Friction is exactly like the colours in your eyes,” Magnus breathes. “It’s just science, Jace. The result of attraction.” He replaces his fingers with a thumb, pressing down against the centre of Jace’s lower lip, and wanting very much to slide it all the way inside his mouth. “What charged particles do to each other when they touch.”

Jace’s fingers aren’t idle either though. They reach up to Magnus’ face too and start to stroke along his jawline, and Magnus’ eyes flutter as he leans the way of his warming touch. Jace cups his hand around his jaw and then suddenly Jace’s eyes are as close as his lips, and Magnus can taste that proximity. 

Almost shyly at first, and yet not at all - looking at Magnus the whole time, as though he’s waiting for something he needs, but not a thing that needs to be spoken - Jace’s mouth touches his and Magnus opens his own. Granting Jace an entry that Magnus knows he wants. Because that’s exactly what Magnus wants too.

They kiss. And slowly eyes start to close. Magnus’ gaze tracking between Jace’s lashes and irises as they flutter almost shut, and only then do they spry open again. His kiss is a challenge to yield. As Magnus explores how, with every touch of his tongue to Jace’s, the resistance he proffers softens slowly for him. Pushing him away sometimes, testing. And when it gives, that’s when his eyes flutter, and almost roll, until finally they shut in acceptance. When Magnus opens his mouth to let their tongues lie adjacent for just one moment - Jace’s underneath Magnus’ - only then does Magnus close his own eyes too. 

When he opens them again, Jace’s body lies beneath his, mouth red from kissing and cheeks pink with heat. While Magnus moves above him, he also moves along him. Feeling how hard they both are now although he didn’t need his sense of touch to know that already. Especially to know it in Jace. So much about his body is telling him already that he is ready to fuck.

As swiftly as he moved to escort Jace out of here, through the sedge grass hours ago, when they first met, Magnus wriggles out of his pants and boots, while Jace unfastens his jeans and starts to pull them down the back of his ass. Neither man is going anywhere now. They’re both in a hurry to stay right here. 

“That’s enough,” Magnus says between kisses, as he helps Jace pry his cock from his briefs, his jeans still only halfway down his upper thighs. “Don’t get cold.” 

Naked from the waist down, Magnus begins to unfasten his weatherproof jacket. 

“Don’t _you_ fucking take off too much either,” Jace huffs. “What if _you_ get cold? Again-”

“I won’t,” he murmurs leaning in and kissing Jace’s mouth as he takes a condom from an inside pocket of his jacket, now it’s undone, tearing it open and feeling for Jace in the near-dark. He’s long and hot and hard. “Because I’m putting things _on_... Lucky I always come prepared... For _everything_ , darling, isn’t it?”

“Oh my god...”

He does dip his fingers into Jace’s mouth now, feeling him suck with a surprising amount of force on them, his tongue making them slippery before he withdraws them. 

“You’re taking too long,” Jace huffs, “For fuck’s sake-”

Magnus works his wet fingers inside himself. “You know, angel, for someone apparently content to wait for penguins all night you are alarmingly impatient when it comes to the finer points of fucking.”

“Just shut up and sit on me, will you?”

Magnus grins from above him, not really ready but ready enough, his own body starting to ache for it too. He eyes Jace keenly and brings his knees either side of his belly, feeling his way by hand until he can feel the cool slick of the lubed condom at his hole. Slowly he starts to push himself down on Jace, feeling the girth of him stretch his entrance and sting just a little when he grows impatient and moves just a bit too fast. He waits for a moment more, but it’s literally only a moment. 

They groan together when Magnus pushes himself down all the way, breathing through his nose as he takes the full length of Jace inside himself now, filling faster than he knows he should all at once, but he doesn’t care. None of that compares a bit to how the cold had felt, and he knows that as soon as he starts to move, nor will it compare to how good fucking down on Jace will feel. He’s as long as he is deliciously insolent and all Magnus wants is to ride him. 

But he pauses for a moment, working his hips and thighs until he’s comfortable, amazed by how deep Jace can penetrate him. Then slowly, only when he’s ready - and Jace has waited for him so well - Magnus starts to move on him for real, letting Jace start to shape him gradually. Leaning forwards sometimes, to kiss his mouth again, or to lick at his tongue. Sometimes nip at his lower lip. Until Jace’s hands feel their way to his thighs, and squeeze. And Magnus squeezes back, quickening his pace, serpentining on Jace. And that takes them both to completion.


	4. Epilogue (Penguins)

“You never told me anything you know about stars, Jace.”

The dawn is nearly breaking now and Jace and Magnus sit fully dressed at the waterline. Jace still warm in his parka and Magnus still warm in between his spread knees, leaned back against his chest. Their boots dangled over the edge of rocks elevated just a meter or so above sea level. Beneath them is a little bight, where the shoreline laps a rare patch of smooth sand on the otherwise jagged coastline. 

The ocean has begun to swell again. Gone is the flat that had kept it bound all night. Jace had woken up to the changed sounds of it, something like sighing, somewhere in the distance. Inside the tent, when he’d opened his eyes, he’d blinked across at Magnus’ electronics but no Magnus. And his heart had fallen flat at first - as flat as it had been at the start of last night - and he’d stared at the LEDs that had made their bodies shimmer in the otherwise darkness but which were now just tiny points of insipidly-hued plastic. Like stagnant stars in a picture. 

But Magnus hadn’t been far, just out on the shoreline was all; in Jace’s parka, observing the penguins. Which he’d earlier heard the vocalizations of, even through Jace’s snores.

Jace smiles at the preview Magnus is showing him, of the shot he’s just taken, on Jace’s Nikon. The pair of widowed seabirds. One with a wing around the other. “Well, what do you want to know about stars?” he asks, nuzzling a cheek against Magnus as the picture disappears. Jace guides his hands around the aperture ring on the lens again. “Try using a larger setting this time. This one is a little bit underexposed. Handle it carefully, only by the shaft, okay? This is my very best lens for this camera and I don’t want it falling into the sea.”

Magnus looks up from where their hands are met on the lens. “I know,” he murmurs. “You should know by now that I am very _very_ good at handling all kinds of shafts, Jace.” 

Magnus twists his body a little between Jace’s knees, to better view him, and they grin at each other. Magnus stares, rapt, into his mismatched eyes and Jace notes, for not the first time this morning, that those eyes still sparkle, even though it’s morning. Even though the liner he was wearing last night is smudged. To Jace, his face is still so nice to look at. And Jace imagines that it always would be.

He leans in to brush the tip of his nose against Magnus’ and then, with his eyes wide open, Jace kisses his mouth. Just a slow thing that asks for nothing more back than for him to soften his lips and let Jace’s own do just enough work to make him want to close his eyes. In the end, they both close their eyes. 

“Look up,” Magnus murmurs, when their lips part and both pairs of eyes have reopened. He points to the only star bright enough to still be visible in the emerging day, now that sunlight has nearly arrived. “I want to know what that one is called, Jace.”

Jace stares up at it. “Alpha Centauri,” he says without missing a beat. “Well, technically Alpha Centauri A. It’s actually two stars, the whole constellation is made up of three but that one there, well, that’s just two. From here on Earth, they’re so close together that it’s hard to distinguish them as two. So it looks like they’re one but they’re not. Did you know any of that?” He looks at Magnus, who’s looking at him through the viewfinder.

“I didn’t know some of that, Jace, no,” Magnus murmurs. “Maybe they just need to be that close. Maybe if they weren’t that close the whole universe would come undone and misalign. Hm? Imagine it. Just because of two points of light that, with our naked eyes, we can’t even distinguish the difference between. For that we would need instruments. For that we do need instruments. So maybe they’re made to be that way, that close. Maybe it’s fate. That there’s no explanation apart from the fact that those two stars are just _like_ that. _That close._ So that people like us can exist underneath them and wonder. Not explain them at all just...wonder.”

Jace looks at him skeptically. Or rather, he looks at the lens like that, looking at him through the end of that. “Well, what the hell kind of scientist are you then, huh?” he asks playfully. “ _Wonder...?_ What the fuck happened to _fate is an idea_ , huh? That just you try’na get in my pants?”

Magnus laughs from behind the camera. “I already told you, I don’t know everything about science, Jace. I’m a biologist, it’s only one kind. It doesn’t mean I can explain absolutely everything. But I know a lot of things. And I know that one of them is that I sometimes definitely do forget to wonder.” He presses the shutter and lowers the camera, looking at the screen as he tilts it towards Jace. “So, what do you think?” he asks. “I wonder if you like it?”

Jace smiles at Magnus' out-of-focus picture of him. “I think I need to teach you some more things about photography, Magnus. There’s no wondering about that at all.”

He chuckles. “Well, I never claimed to know even one single thing about photography, darling. But now I’ve met you, well, maybe I can change that.” 

Jace sighs and lies back on the rocks, putting his hands behind his head. Magnus lies down too, and snuggles his head on the plane of Jace’s chest, the side where his heart is on. Jace presses his lips to his forehead then tilts his face towards the ocean. Waves are breaking across it and a breeze has begun, and ribbons of cloud have formed across the sky. 

The men below it start to feel the warmth of the sun’s first golden rays. And the souls which lie there on the rocks with them start to re-entwine.


End file.
